Northam housing plan unites families
Tears well up in Regina Mahengo’s eyes as she speaks of living with her two children again and being reunited with her family after a year of separation since starting work at Northam Platinum.
Since 2017 Mahengo had lived in Northam Platinum’s single mine quarters in the remote outpost of the Zondereinde mine near Thabazimbi, leaving her young children with family in Soshanguve near Pretoria.
She successfully applied to Northam for a house and financial assistance in a scheme that will provide her with her own home.
“I’m so happy we’ll be a proper family again,” she says.
Bheki Nhleko, a 40-year-old laboratory assistant who has been with Northam for 17 years, has just bought a house in the Northam housing scheme, bringing his wife and four children aged between three and 12 to live with him.
“I am more than excited. My children kept asking why they couldn’t come visit me where I was staying for so many years, but there just wasn’t space. Now we are going to be together again, all of us,” Nhleko says, adding he was in a single room in the mine village for many years.
“I realised I could afford a house on my salary when they explained it to me. They will help me pay for it so it means I still get my full salary,” he says, standing in his R550,000 house, one of 69 built on a plot in the town of Northam at a cost of R35m.
The scheme Northam has developed entails building houses on company-bought land and then using its balance sheet to help its employees take ownership of their own homes while working for the company. Northam has another 500 houses planned for a plot of land across the road.
Northam has not set itself any housing targets or annual budget and instead operates on a demand-led basis.
“The mandate from the board is to build as many houses as we can sell,” says Gerrie Geertsema, the programme manager of property development.
Northam would like to build houses in Thabazimbi, about 40km away, where some of its employees come from, but it is concerned about the poor municipal management there.
Northam provides a onethird interest-free loan towards the cost of buying the house, which the employee can use to secure a bank mortgage, with Northam paying the full monthly cost of the bond repayment, switching funds it would have paid towards a living-out allowance to the scheme, which remains in place until the house is paid off or the person leaves Northam.
The well-built brick houses come in three sizes: 50m², 60m² and 80m², with prices from as low as R480,000 to as high as R700,000. Northam has opened the scheme up to Anglo American Platinum employees in the area as well as local communities to bring in some price tension and ensure the value of the houses will increase in time, giving their employees a true asset.
The provision of housing is one of the big costs and risks for mining companies operating in SA. Companies with mines in areas removed from towns often find informal settlements of shacks springing up near their operations as the prospect of jobs attracts people. Some miners opt to live in these areas to boost their take-home pay by keeping the bulk of their livingout allowance while paying a pittance for accommodation.
This exact scenario unfolded around Lonmin’s Marikana operations, feeding into the struggle for control of the workforce between the National Union of Mineworkers and the Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union, culminating in the killing of 44 people, 34 of whom were shot dead by the police in 2012.
Lonmin, the world’s thirdlargest platinum miner, had to build accommodation for 11,500 of its employees, but the weak platinum price is working against major housing investment, CEO Ben Magara said in 2017.
Lonmin has 33,000 people working on its mines near Rustenburg, of which 25,000 are its employees. It has built accommodation for more than half of those employees.